Chaste means refraining from sex, or pure and restrained in style. A chaste kiss, chaste living, a chaste design.
The sexual sense is religious and historical in feel. The stylistic sense is live and useful: chaste prose is plain and unornamented, and a chaste design has nothing added for effect — which is high praise in architecture and typography. Note chastity; and that chaste and caste are the same Latin word, castus, meaning pure.
1adjectivechasteRefraining from sex.
“In the old novel, the heroine stays chaste until her wedding night.”
2adjectivepurePure and restrained in style.
“The church has a chaste white interior with no paintings or gold.”
chaste is a quality of purity or restraint.
Latin castus means pure or morally clean. Caste comes from the same word through Portuguese, and chasten and chastise are related through the idea of correcting.
Latin
castus — pure
Old French
chaste — morally pure
Middle English
chaste
English, today
chaste
From Middle English chaste, from Old French chaste (“morally pure”), from Latin castus (“pure”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA